(EOZ: )Read this sickening pseudo-d’var Torah on the J-Street site by Rabbi Donna Kirshbaum, Congregation String of Pearls, a Reconstructionist congregation in Princeton, NJ that hold services in a Unitarian church. This is the most intricate pilpul on J-Street’s site:

[T]he Torah itself places our textual tradition squarely in the realm of a literary, rather than a literal, tradition. The need for a lively symbolism trumps the need for historical accuracy. But throughout this literary masterpiece, perhaps most clearly in Deuteronomy, its fifth book, we can discern a political stance that takes the form of an arc toward justice, especially distributive justice. The Torah claims that justice and peace can not exist without economic parity. And we also find in it the radical notion… that land does not belong to any of us, that we are all its tenants. As the narrative’s protagonist, God, says in parshat Yitro: indeed all the earth is Mine, ki li kol ha’aretz. …Right now we need to bring these resilient foundations of our tradition to bear on a seemingly intractable problem. Of course a sovereign state needs clear and verifiable boundaries, but let us remind ourselves that we come from a literary tradition in which land has long been revered for its symbolic value at least as much as its economic or strategic value; we do not come from a literal tradition. A literal interpretation would claim land ownership, down to the last hectare and dunam, based on our ancient ancestors’ understanding of what God wanted from them and from their descendants.

Yes – Reb Donna (which is what her temple’s website calls her) takes God’s words of “all the Earth is Mine” and applies it literally. But the eighth verse in Deuteronomy, the book she praises for its political stance, says quite clearly: Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD swore unto your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them. (MORE)

She wanted to prove there was no truth: I have been known to pull guns out online when the concept of truth is questioned. It gets me into trouble, but I have to say it is worth it. It is supposed to be within the concept of the argument. The problem is when they take the gun out of context as well. When someone has a problem with objectivity it is best to stay away and not argue with them. Sadly there comes a point when dialog does no good. These people are out to hurt us. They understand reason; they make it seem like there is a debate, but the TRUTH is they are looking to trap whoever they can in their scheme. No, I’m not kidding. I leave a message on my blog for a reason: Because we can’t always know the answer doesn’t mean that Truth is subjective. Neither does it mean that Truth can be manipulated by data or manipulated out of context. When the Truth is obscured it fails to be Truth.

It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one’s senses is simply vulgar philistinism.

…Did Orwell say philistinism? oh… just in case any authority wants to try that little trick again of taking my thoughts out of context. No, I’m not threatening Rabbi Donna.

Updated: Philistinism is to make the weapons and the Jews depend on the Philistine weapon sharpeners. It says this in Samuel 1